The four candidates scheduled for testing, modelled to break-even. Every figure below derives from one assumptions block, so the charts and the table can never disagree.
Every order pays for acquisition, payment processing and AI fulfilment before it pays you. At a mid acquisition cost, this is what is left.
Order value and click price together decide this, not either alone. Supplement Claim Substantiation keeps 88% of every order because a $200 customer is small against a $2500 sale. HOA Document Review keeps just 50% — a $83 customer against a $189 order. Note that the cheapest thing to sell is not the safest: HOA Document Review survives a low price only because its clicks are the cheapest of the four at $5.
Monthly profit against orders per month, at a mid acquisition cost of $200. Where each line crosses the dashed rule is the volume needed to clear $10,000 a month.
Steeper is better: fewer orders for the same income. Supplement Claim Substantiation is steepest by a wide margin at $2,207 a sale, which is the whole argument for it — 5 orders a month clears the target, against 38 for Construction Takeoff and 108 for HOA Document Review.
The same target, at three acquisition costs. Dotted rules mark what one person can physically fulfil in a month; bars in red exceed it.
This is the chart that decides the programme. If clicks convert at only one in thirty-three, HOA Document Review stop working — either the margin turns negative or the volume needed exceeds what one person can deliver. Construction Takeoff, Supplement Claim Substantiation and CAM Reconciliation Audit still clear the target on volume a single operator could actually handle. That asymmetry, not the score, is what the test order is built around.
Starting from $5,000, with $3,000 spent on the test programme and orders ramping to the sustainable level over eight months.
Each is capped at the volume that clears the target, so the lines converge by construction. What differs is the slope and the depth of the trough — how long you fund the business before it funds itself. Supplement Claim Substantiation climbs fastest because it needs only 5 orders a month to get there.
These four are what survived screening of all 335 candidates.
Four in five rejections were the same failure: someone downstream earns a larger fee and gives the deliverable away to win it. Any model above is worthless if the candidate cannot clear that filter first.
Assumptions: Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30, fixed costs of $250/month, and 120 productive fulfilment hours a month for one person.
| Per order | Construction Takeoff | Supplement Claim Substantiation | HOA Document Review | CAM Reconciliation Audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blended price | $499 | $2500 | $189 | $799 |
| Payment processing | −$15 | −$73 | −$6 | −$23 |
| AI fulfilment | −$8 | −$20 | −$5 | −$8 |
| Gross per order | $476 | $2407 | $178 | $768 |
| Orders per month to clear $10,000 net | ||||
| If acquisition is cheap ($80) | 29 | 5 | 80 | 16 |
| If mid ($200) | 38 | 5 | 108 | 18 |
| If expensive ($450) | 135 | 6 | 914 | 24 |
| Capacity as one person | ||||
| Minutes to fulfil one | 30 | 120 | 25 | 40 |
| Solo ceiling per month | 240 | 60 | 288 | 180 |
| Headroom at mid cost | 6× | 12× | 2× | 10× |
| Net per year at mid cost, if volume is reached | $120k | $120k | $120k | $120k |
Read the middle block, not the bottom one. Any of these clears roughly the same income if it reaches volume, so the real question is which volume is believable. 5 substantiation files a month is a plausible year-one business. The same income from $189 condo reviews means 108 of them — a different job entirely. Conversion rate is the one unknown that decides all four, and no test has been run yet — which is exactly what the $3,000 programme buys. One structural point in favour of all four: payment is taken at or before delivery, so there are no receivables and no working capital tied up.